


Chalk Roses

by Seawitchkaraoke



Series: Running from the Roses [1]
Category: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Amandines A+ parenting, August and Raysel as roomates, Gen, I'm not tagging Simon's A+ parenting but only because I'm nice, Luna's A+ parenting, Sylvester's A+ parenting, The kids are not okay, Trauma, but maybe they will be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:55:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26641801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seawitchkaraoke/pseuds/Seawitchkaraoke
Summary: October only has one guestroom, but two people - a cousin and a sister - who need a place to stay. So August and Raysel move in together.Raysel would love to paint all the walls black, but since that's not exactly healthy, she settles for one - one that they paitn black and smooth down and turn into a giant chalkboard.August and Raysel draw lots of things on that board, pass notes, have arguments. They even draw flowers.But they don't draw Roses.
Relationships: August Torquill & Rayseline Torquill
Series: Running from the Roses [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1943515
Comments: 9
Kudos: 24





	Chalk Roses

It had been Quentin's idea. He had seen the concept on one of those internet sites he and the other teenagers seemed to love so much - nevermind that Raysel really wasn't that much older than them.

Raysel still wanted, needed, craved the darkness she had known for so long. If it had been entirely up to her she might have torn down the colors from the walls of their shared room and painted it all in black. She knew, really, that that couldn't be, hadn't been healthy but she'd done it anyway, might have done it again, if only because it was what she'd known for so long. It had been better than the rosy childhood decorations her parents had never taken down room in and she had never learnt what kind of decor she might like - even the thought of decorating would have been ridiculous in the unending darkness.

But it wasn't up to her. Toby only had one guestroom after all and two people - a cousin and a sister - who needed a place to sleep and August, who judt like Raysel didn't entirely know what she liked or who she was, knew one thing very well: she didn't want to live in a room that was entirely dark.

So they had followed Quentin's idea. Had smoothed one wall down and painted it black and created a wall sized chalkboard. Had bought chalk in all possible colours and a little sponge to clean again should the wall somehow grow full.

(they had also bought a lot of other things. Simon had provided them with more than enough money, out of love as an uncle and father or out of guilt or probably both and Raysel and August had spent a day carrying home whatever random thing happened to catch their eye. May approved wildly while Quentin despaired of anyone in this house ever learning what order was)

So while the rest of the room held all manner of beautiful and ridiculous and useful or useless things the black wall, was just that, black and blank and bleak. But well. They'd gotten over worse things than the fear of a blank page.

So they drew. Little things, animals and rainbows and stars. They passed notes back and forth, had long drawn iut arguments one sentence at a time and whem Cass visited they let her draw out a diagram of how magic was inherited and listened to her theories on the how and the why of it.

And they drew flowers.

Sunflowers and violets, lillies and tulips. Flowers that only grew in the summerlands and had no mortal name and exotic flowers that hadn't needed summerland soil to become as strange as they did. Flowers that thrived in cracks, barely tended by a gardeners hands and delicate flowers that needed the exact right combination of shade and sun and water to survive.

But they didn't draw roses.

As time passed they learned to live with each other, learned to live with themselves. Some of the things they'd bought quietly disappeared as they realized it didn't suit them. Their drawings became more complex and instead of simply drawing separately next to each other, they learned to add things to one anothers paintings without overtaking them. 

Dawn was growing nearer as August returned home - and when had October's house become home? - she held a new plant she'd picked in one of the mortal parks, one her mother would never have allowed in her garden. It might be simple and common but it was new to her and she was going to show it to Raysel and maybe they could create its likeness on their wall.

When she entered their shared room, Raysel was sitting on the floor in front of the wall. The wall was empty - that was unusual but maybe Raysel had needed room for some big new project. 

No. It wasn't empty.

The flower fell from August's suddenly nerveless hand

On the blackboard in front of Rayseline was the drawing of a single red rose.

For a moment August couldn't move. Could barely even breathe. They had been doing So Well in ignoring the one flower neither of them would draw, the one thst hurt too much, reminded them too much of the people of the places that SHOULD have been home, why couldn't they just keep ignoring it, keep the roses away a little longer? 

But Raysel was sitting on the floor, she hadn't moved when August came in hadn't reacted at her sudden indrawn breath, hadn't said or done anything at all. She was just sitting there, staring at the rose, the red chalk, still held loosely in her limp fingers. 

August took a breath.

Slowly she stepped towards Raysel, towards the blackboard, towards tbe rose. She had half a mind to erase it, to draw a million other flowers, pretend this hadn't happened, pretend they were okay, like they had been pretending, except they hadn't been pretending, htey had been fine -

At least August thought they had been.

Instead, almost without her conscious consent her fingers took a white piece of chalk. And drew a rose.

That seemed to startle Raysel at least partly out of her stillness. She looked at August's rose, looked up at her cousin and then, as something in her hardened or maybe finally softened, she raised her own chalk again and started drawing.

They kept drawing, rose after rose after rose. August keeping largely to the white and pale colours of her mother's gardens, Raysel ranging more wildly, using every piece of chalk they had, sometimes overlaying several colours to create patterns that no mortal rose could ever have grown.

They kept drawing, only pausing once, as dawn slammed into them, but continuing as soon as the ashes of the dying magic all around them were settled enough to let them breathe again. They drew roses with their vivid colours and their cruel thorns until the entire blackboard was filled, with not even a hint of wall remaining clear.

Only then did they set their - now much reduced - chalk down and turned to each other, staring into each other's still tearless eyes.

And collapsed.

They fell on the floor, holding on to each other for dear life, clinging, and finally, crying, finally mourning for the home they should have had if not for their mothers who refused to be the warmth they needed, their fathers who, for too long, hadn't had the strenght to helo them break free.

They cried and they held each other and if Jazz heard them when she got uo to go to work, everyone else long since having gone to bed, she didn't say anything and she didn't inquire.

Finally, once they had no tears left, they got up and cleaned the wally wiping away every trace of roses from the room, except for the faint smell of August's magic, that they had long since gotten used to.

Then they finally went to sleep, exhausted but reliefed to finally have pulled the first thorns from their skin.

In the evening tbey would wake and lift up the weed August had found, would learn its name and would draw its likeness on the wall. In the evening they would talk about their mothers and start the painful work of removing the deeper thorns that were buried in their hearts. But for now they slept, in the hope thst maybe finally, they could learn to live with the roses.


End file.
